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2007 ART THEME: THE GREEN MAN
The Art Theme for Burning Man 2006
will be "Hope and Fear: The Future", wherein we
explore how we create futurity, manifested as an expression of the promise
of our hopes, and the contractions of our fears.
Into
the Heart of Fire: At the Burning Man Festival (1999)(VHS)
Burning Man
Book by John Plunkett (Editor), Barbara Traub (Editor), Larry Harvey
(Contributor), Brad Wieners
ART & IDEAS |
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THE FAR FRONTIER
Burning Man and the Internet
From Robert B. Gelman on 13 August 1995 for RadioNet Talk
Radio, the Internet's first talk radio show on air on KSCO in Santa Cruz
July '94 to Oct '96 and a RealAudio beta!
"Welcome to Nowhere. Its name is whatever you name it.
Its wealth is whatever you bring it. Next week it
will be gone, but next week might as well be never.
You are here now."
--The Black Rock Gazette
Imagine a completely abstract space, a world without context, a place that
is no place at all apart from what one brings to it. Anyone may enter
this arena. Distinctions of race, class, and social outlook are largely
irrelevant here. Participants are free to reinvent their own identities.
Reality is what you make it on this ultimate frontier. It is a place
wherein the boundary that divides the inner from the outer disappears.
This world, of course, is known as "cyber-space" and it exists only in the
imagination and experience of those who travel the Internet. Or does it?
The Black Rock Festival, known informally as Burning Man, occurs annually
during the Labor Day weekend. Black Rock is the largest flat expanse of
land in North America; a featureless alkaline plain devoid both of
landmarks and life forms. At the bottom of the sky are distant mountains.
In the foreground is the tip of one's nose. In between is an ambiguous
zone. All objects here loom suddenly as one approaches, as if magically
materializing out of nothing. A dancing dot that hovers indis tinctly in
the space ahead, might instantly become a giant neon eyeball, a huge
fiberglass dog-head, or an oasis, surrounded by paper palm trees. Visions
such as these are normal here. For nothing else exists within this desert
space, apart from what we bring to it. This is a wholly intentional
world; a realm of virtual reality to which anyone may contribute. Aided by
a few expressive props, participants can program worlds entirely of their
own devise. This desert is a vast blank screen upon which any fantasy may
be projected.
The intensely participatory character of the Festival is soon apparent to
anyone who visits the playa. Much of the art in this "gallery" is
spontaneously contributed. One year, for example, a labyrinth was
sponsored by the Project. A curving pathway led participants to a stone
at it's center. Within minutes someone had planted a walkie-talkie
beneath it. Participants could now converse with the stone and receive
answers from the anonymous oracle. Black Rock, like the Internet, is a
radically interactive environment in which distinctions between "audience"
and "artwork," "professional" and "amateur," quickly dissolve.
Black Rock also models the emerging culture of cyber-space in other ways.
For here, in this world without walls, every user of the space enjoys a
radical equality with other actors. ("Amazing!", said a newcomer from
L.A., "It doesn't even seem to matter what kind of car you drive!")
Overnight a self-elected society springs up which transcends demographics.
It is a Wild West village full of freedom and opportunity, a community
without hierarchies. Participants in Burning Man achieve identity through
what they do.
By day this boom town sprawls around a central hub designed to form a
giant compass, and settlement is so dispersed that communication between
remote points becomes a (challenging) necessity. Accordingly, we publish
a daily desk-top newspaper and broadcast a 24 hour FM radio station. This
year we will again transmit live video via satellite to the Internet and a
plan is underway to feature other burning effigies simulcast in different
time zones.
By night the playa is transformed into a galaxy of lights -- synaptic
nodes within a dreaming brain. Society convenes spontaneously around
these fire-lit conferences. And there are times, as one drifts through
this exotic nighttime world, when heaven and Earth seem to merge. Any
given point of light in this disorienting darkness might be 4, 40,
or--should one happen to fix on a low-lying star-- 400 billion miles
distant. The only orienting point becomes the four-story tall Burning
Man. Car lights veer and drift on disconcerting vectors, and fireworks
flash overhead. The blue neon glow of the Man becomes a beacon_the
ultimate gathering place and ceremonial center for a society suspended in
a void.
We believe the Black Rock Desert, a place which in itself is tantamount to
Outer Space, also models the experience of technologic inner space; the
equally vast frontier of the Internet. Stationed before our computers we
are exiled from the passionate immediacy and physical contact that culture
needs to survive. Perhaps communication, by itself, is not enough. A
more direct communion is required. It is in this spirit that we offer
Burning Man as a space station on the Internet. For many of us, it's time
to come home.
--Darryl Van Rhey
Burning Man on the WWW:
Official Site
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** U.S. Out of Cyberspace! Join EFF. membership@eff.org
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